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UK Giveaway and Review – Doodle Artist: Guinea Pigs

Disclaimer – Please read this disclosure about my use of affiliate links which are contained within this post.Doodle Artist: Guinea Pigs is a lovely book illustrated and kindly sent to me by Annette Rand. Annette has very kindly sent me two extra copies of this book and her other new title Doodle Artist: Dogs so that I can run a giveaway. This is being run on the pinned post on my Facebook page and is open to UK residents only due to postage costs, it ends at 8pm on Monday 28th of November. Good luck!

This book is filled with 2 copies of 20 full-page images of guinea pigs and they’re super cute! Annette used images of real guinea pigs to create the outlines so that they’re realistic and then she filled them all with her signature patterns so if you’ve loved her previous books, you’ll love this one too! This paperback book is A4 size, with a portrait cover and a mixture of portrait and landscape images. The book is glue-bound so it’s a little difficult to get it to lie flat but the images are printed single-sided with a large border around them so none of the image is lost into the spine. The paper is standard Createspace paper which gets a pretty bad rep but you can’t see half the proceeding images through it, the paper is bright white and thick enough that my water-based fineliners didn’t bleed at all (they did shadow) or chew up the paper in any way so it was a joy to colour and would be perfect for pens or pencils and you could even use your sharpies or alcohol pens with a protective sheet behind so that the next image doesn’t get spoiled. Each of the 20 images portrays a single guinea pig, pair or even a group, with 2 copies of each so you could colour copies to match your current, or past, pets. Annette’s clever use of realistic outlines and stylised patterns makes these guinea pigs look really cute and the patterns really add to the texture of the pictures and often looks like fur, they’re really lovely! There’s a real variety of image content from a guinea pig dressed up in steampunk clothing to various portrait style images, a guinea pig hiding in flowers, some dressed up in floral garlands and even wings, and there’s even a guinea pig mandala! Who’d have thought you could get so much content variety from 20 images of the same small furry animal?!

In terms of mental health, this book is lovely. It’s really calming and has various different levels of intricacy to suit your good and bad days. The line thickness is the same throughout and I would describe it as thin but not very thin (approximately fineliner thickness). The lines are crisp and accurate with no fuzziness, blurring or not quite joining up so this is a really professional looking book. I really enjoyed colouring this book ready for review and it was a great design to use my glitter gel pens on. The guinea pigs are beautifully drawn – some are swirly, some are patterned, some are furry and others are flowery. This really is a fabulous book for animal lovers and those who love guinea pigs, it would also be an amazing book for vets! The majority of the images aren’t drawn to be exactly like real-life guinea pigs, they have realistic outlines but they’re covered in patterns or dressed up in costumes or with props which means that you can use any colour scheme you like, as you’ll see from my glittery rainbow guinea pigs below!

I found this book really calming and relaxing. As with all nature themed books, I find them the most relaxing and the best at reducing my anxiety levels and this book was no exception. The pictures are beautiful, there are no filler images and each has definitely earnt its right to be there and you could even cut them out once you’re done and frame them. The variation in levels of detail and intricacy means that as long as you have fairly good vision, you’ll be able to enjoy this book on your good and bad days and those of you with moderate to good fine motor control will definitely get a huge amount out of this book. The image below was coloured using UK supermarket own-brand glitter gel pens.